"One of us is gone."
"We know, O Supervisor."
"Why did you let him get away?"
"If he is not the True Jackson, it doesn't matter that he fled. If he
is the Supervisor, he will return. Otherwise, why did he come here to
us in the first place?"
Another robot straightened. "We are ashamed, O Jackson, that we have
failed the Divine Test and have not recognized our True Supervisor."
Angus held up his arms for silence. "Once there was a cargo of robots.
That was a hundred years ago. The ship was from Vega II. It developed
trouble and crashed when it tried to land on this planet. There was--"
"What's a year, O Supervisor?" asked 204.
"A Vega-two, Jackson?" said 76 bewilderedly.
"What's a planet?" another wanted to know.
McIntosh leaned back hopelessly against the cliff. All of their
memories and a good deal of their vocabularies had been lost. He could
determine how much only through days of conversation. It would take
weeks to learn their function, to rekindle a sense of duty sufficiently
strong to draw their interest away from religion. Unless--
He drew resolutely erect. "Strip the converters! Pull the aft tube
lining!"
The robots looked uncomprehendingly at him. It was obvious they weren't
trained for spacecraft maintenance.
But it had to have something to do with mechanics. "A battle fleet is
orbiting at one diameter! Arm all warheads on the double!"
They stared helplessly at one another, then back at Angus. Not
ordnancemen.
"Pedestrian Strip Number Two is jammed! Crane crew, muster on the
right!"
The robots shifted uncertainly. Apparently they weren't civic
maintenancemen, either.
Defeated, Angus scanned their blank face plates. For a moment, it was
almost as though he could discern expressions of confusion. Then he
laughed at the thought that metal could accommodate a frown.
Suddenly the robots shifted their gaze to the cave. Drummond, shoulders
sagging dismally, walked out and squinted against the glare. Several of
the robots started toward him.
"Okay, okay!" he growled, heading back for the ledge before they could
reach him.
* * * * *
"No luck?" Angus asked.
Disgusted, Drummond clambered up beside him. "The cave's just a
nice-sized room."
"Took you two hours to find that out?"
The younger man shook his head. "I was hiding by the entrance, waiting
for the clunkers to break it up and give me a chance to run for the
ship.... How many robots did we decide there were?"
"About eight hundred."
"Wrong. You can add another four hundred or so."
"In the cave?"
Drummond nodded. "With their parts spread all the way from here to hell
and back."
"Dismantled?"
"Down to the last nut and bolt. They've even got their secondary memory
banks stripped."
Angus was thoughtfully silent a long while. "RA ..." he said finally.
"Robot Assembler!"
"That's what I figured." Drummond turned back toward the robots and
funneled his voice through his hands.
"Okay, you clunkers! I want all odd-numbered RAs stripped down for
reconditioning!" He glanced at Angus. "When they get through, I'll have
half of what's left strip the other half, and so forth."
McIntosh grinned caustically. "Brilliant! The whole operation shouldn't
take more than two or three days." Then his face took on a grim cast.
"Drummond, we've only got four hours left to get to those converters."
"But you don't understand. Once they get started, they'll be so busy,
we'll probably be able to walk away."